With the introduction of Windows 2000 and now XP, Information Technology (IT) organizations are once again having to deal with the issue of when, not if, to migrate their Operating System (OS). Several factors affect their decision, like when to replace hardware, is the existing hardware capable, when are internal applications ready for the new OS, when will independent software vendor (ISV) applications be ready and how to prioritize all these options. As a result of the above questions, the ability to enable a personal computer (PC) to be booted easily to a new OS at a future time would be desirable. Most PC manufacturing or marketing organizations continue to bring out new PCs pre-loaded with a new OS before an IT organization is ready to make a major switch to the new OS. For example, manufacturers continue to offer similar computer system models loaded with Windows 98, 2000, ME and XP. As new PCs are manufactured, they may incorporate the latest version of an OS, so it would be desirable to allow a user to boot with an older version because various factors may favor delaying switching to the newest OS.
There is, therefore, a need for a method and supporting apparatus that allows PCs to be introduced with a switch mechanism that may be invoked at any time which enables booting with different versions of a bootable program or OS wherein the switch has sufficient security to protect against licensing abuse for program manufacturer.